


The Sacred and Profane

by thats_a_secret



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, Can I shoot them, M/M, Oh no what are Feelings, Slow Build, Temple of the Whills, The Force, monks and assassins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9089923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thats_a_secret/pseuds/thats_a_secret
Summary: “I’ll tell your future in exchange for that blaster,” said a voice.It reached him crisp and whole, demanding attention, as if spoken straight into his ears. Baze twitched. He shot a glance at the crowd, which flowed by like it always did except—was it coincidence?—the people parted briefly around a young monk with a staff sitting on a stoop on the opposite side of the street, staring into space. He was smiling a little. Almost smug.“Yes, I’m talking to you,” said the monk, speaking cheerfully into thin air. “Would you like a free tip? If you shoot that blaster now, you will never see the light of day again.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is now bone of my bones  
> and flesh of my flesh

The assassin lounged in the shadow of a holy temple, idly polishing his blaster as he waited for the daily prayer to end. He was tucked into an alcove, hidden from sight, but he could clearly hear the bustle of the morning crowd across the narrow street. The market’s first batch of finger foods roasted over two dozen grills, hot and spicy. Baze kept his eyes on the temple, looking back and forth at its two entrances, and listened lazily for the singing that would signal the end of the daily prayer.

Occasionally, voices drifted to him from the street, like threads catching briefly on a nail: “Tanghulu, fresh sweet tanghulu for sale!”

“Mom, are we there yet?”

“It was the craziest thing I’d ever seen, that move!”

“I’ll tell your future in exchange for that blaster,” said a voice.

Funny, thought Baze. Who’d give their blaster to some sham fortuneteller?

“I’m serious,” said the voice. It reached his alcove crisp and whole, demanding attention, as if spoken straight into his ears. Baze twitched. After another visual sweep of the temple, he shot a glance at the crowd, which flowed by like it always did except—was it coincidence?—the people parted briefly around a young monk with a staff sitting on a stoop on the opposite side of the street, staring into space. He was smiling a little. Almost smug.

“Yes, I’m talking to you,” said the monk, speaking cheerfully into thin air. “Would you like a free tip? If you shoot that blaster now, you will never see the light of day again.”

An ardent, melancholic song flooded the air, broadcasted live from megaphones set up throughout the holy city. The dust seemed to tremble with the passion of the faithful. Baze fumbled with his blaster, something he hadn’t done since he was twelve. Then the doors of the temple opened, and the pilgrims spilled out. Baze’s target walked with them, an activist organizer who was making noise about the armed forces in Jedha. She was unprotected, unsuspecting, the easiest kill he’d had in months. He looked at her—looked back at the stoop—and the monk had disappeared.

He hesitated. For an instant, he swore that he was hallucinating, that the monk was some sort of strange dream. But the monk’s staff was still propped up against the stoop, practically laughing at him.

Silently and swiftly—because he was a professional, dammit—he got the kriff out of dodge. The monk looked harmless, but Baze had _heard things_ about the followers of the Force. Every seasoned veteran in his line of work seemed to have a story about them. This route of attack was compromised; he’d have to kill the target some other way, and he prayed to whatever messed-up Force was out there that he didn’t see that monk ever again.

The Force, as usual, didn’t hear.

\--

The next time, the assassin was in the underground catacombs beneath one of the hundreds of holy temples in the city. The late afternoon was so dry his lips were cracked and bleeding in five places, but it was cool in the dark tombs. The ashes of the dead were arranged carefully in kyber crystal cubbies in the rock walls. His target now was an ewok who had a hand in the illegal trade of kyber, and Baze was just scoping out the territory, sauntering around in the guise of a workman, trying to figure out how to best get past the ewok’s security detail.

“You do not make a convincing construction worker,” a familiar voice drawled.

Baze whirled around. The monk stood three feet away, his staff planted in front of Baze’s feet like a warning. He had that same smirk on his face as before, now directed at Baze’s chest. Close up, Baze knew for sure: the monk was blind, and knew how to fight with a staff.

“Perhaps you should put on a bear suit. Pretend to be a circus act. That would be less ridiculous. Come, you are attracting attention,” said the monk.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Baze replied.

“There’s no point in denying it, young man.” The monk flicked his staff in the direction of the stairs leading up to the temple entrance. “I am not the only one who has noticed you. The guardians of the Whills do not take kindly to killing intent on our grounds.”

Baze rolled his eyes, and tried to convey through a heavy sigh how hard he had just rolled his eyes. “The guardians can’t catch me. And anyways, I thought your temple was a sanctuary for everyone.”

“And it is—for everyone who does not aim to desecrate it.”

“Uhuh. Sure. So why’re you letting people run around stealing your precious shiny rocks all the time?”

The monk’s smile broadened—and Baze, to his surprise, felt like it was genuine. “The ewok is your target? My, and I thought you didn’t care.”

“It’s just a job,” Baze said, drier than the desert.

“Oh, forgive me for suggesting you might have feelings. I assure you that the guardians are taking care of this ewok and his insult to the Temple—by our own means. Shall we?”

He bowed, a hand raised to the stairs, but in a way that demonstrated that he thought Baze was hilarious and he was just playing along with the joke. Baze glowered. He really would have to kill this monk somehow; this was getting unprofessional and dangerous. Not now, though. There were too many witnesses and potential enemies in the vicinity. A few other monks and actual workmen milled industriously around the temple, but none of them spared Baze a glance as he walked up the stairs and out into the street. The blind monk followed.

“My offer still stands, you know,” he said.

Baze shifted back and forth on his feet, waiting for an opportunity to slip into the closest dark alleyway. He felt, childishly, like he needed permission from the monk before leaving. “What?”

“I’ll tell your future in exchange for that blaster. Foreknowledge might come in handy, soon enough.”

“Right. And you know this because?”

“The Force tells me so.”

The monk was grinning at Baze’s shoes. Baze forced himself to stop fidgeting. “Yeah, well, I stopped believing in the Force years ago. You’re the only problem I have right now.”

“Aw, you think too much of me.” The monk was still smiling, but it seemed to have grown softer around the edges. Baze had never really thought of smiles as _soft_ before. “You are strong, but you will need conviction in your troubles to come. My name is Chirrut Imwe. Know that my prayers are with you.”

He turned around and walked back into the temple, tapping his staff along. Baze, not knowing why, watched him until his robes disappeared among the arches of the building. It was like his presence had sucked away all the noise of the street, and now that he was gone it came rushing back, louder and stranger than before. Jedha, where Baze had lived since he was born, suddenly felt like an alien planet. His feet didn’t quite seem to meet the ground.

Nobody had ever— _prayed_ for him before.

He took a breath, his head light, and began to slowly walk away. He didn’t take jobs related to the temples again.

The troubles began a week later.

\--

It was the middle of a clear blue night, Jedha’s pink planet a blazing crescent in the sky, and Baze was the target now, curled up on the top floor of a lean-to with a twisted ankle, waiting to die. He’d only been grazed in the initial attack, but whoever had a hit on him had sent a whole platoon that had hounded him for days, driving him across the whole city until they’d cornered him, exhausted and out of blaster gas, in this building. It was only a matter of time before they found him and finished him.

It was almost a relief. He’d been doing anything to survive for so long, just for the sake of making it one more day; and now he knew that all of it had been worthless. He was going to die here, just like any other animal crawling to its end. With clarity came a deep sense of calm.

Then, as the door downstairs burst open and he heard the assassins rattling about through the floor, he had a strange thought:

If he still had it in him to believe, he would be praying right now.

And along with that came another thought: he didn’t have to pray anymore. There was someone out there who would believe in his place. Who thought he was worth praying _for_.

The assassins pounded up the stairs, and Baze stumbled to his feet, the calm destroyed by a pure instinctive terror. He had to get out. He had to get away. He looked out the window, and in the light of the pink crescent he saw a broken-down temple spread out a block away like the palm of an outstretched hand. Before he could stop to think about it, he was climbing the window ledge.

The door burst open behind him. Baze dropped out the window three stories and tumbled through his landing. Pain lanced across his back and through his twisted ankle, but he rolled to a stop and got to his feet in one piece. Blasterfire rained down from the lean-to. Baze started to run, pushing past the pain from his ankle, zigzagging through the street toward the temple. One shot hit him in the arm; another in the waist; he kept going, the fastest he had ever run, gasping for breath. He couldn’t see anything past the wind in his eyes and the temple glowing pink in the night. He didn’t know what he would do once he got there, or why he was even going there, but something in him thought, _sanctuary_ , and his whole being yearned for it desperately. He hurtled closer, closer—he was almost there—he reached the steps—

He crashed down. Fire seared across his back, and he made a choked cry. His vision blacked for a moment. As if from a distance, he felt himself gasping like a fish on the ground, clawing feebly at the stone steps. His ears were ringing. Piece by piece, his vision returned, and the ringing subsided. He realized he was sobbing: “No no no no no _please_.”

And then something warm and gentle closed over his hands, making them still.

“Shh, shh. I have you.”

Baze twisted his face up, fire still blazing through his back, and saw that young face, that soft smile.

“Chirrut Imwe,” he said. “Please.”

“Yes,” said the monk. He skimmed his hands lightly around Baze’s waist until he’d found the empty blaster, then took it and stood up. Baze lowered his head to the ground, fighting for each breath between his teeth, and saw hazily the group of assassins gathered, full of menace, around the temple.

“Brothers and sisters,” said the monk. He walked up to the assassins and planted his staff between them and Baze. “This man is now under the protection of the guardians of the Whills. Hear my words and know them to be true: if you do any further harm to him, you would be harming the Temple itself, and all of us will bring our wrath to your heads until the day you die.” He tossed Baze’s blaster to one of the assassins. “A token of good faith. Claim him to be dead, and your employer will be none the wiser. Let the Force be my witness.”

The assassins stood, watching the monk. The fool, thought Baze with a swell of grief. They’ll kill him.

The seconds ticked by, the only sound Baze’s own labored breathing.

Then, one by one, the assassins drifted away, until they had all melted silently into the night. The monk stood listening, a motionless shadow, for what felt to Baze like an eternity.

Then he swept to Baze’s side in an instant, skimming his hands over the length of his body and hissing at the wounds. Baze blinked, swallowing around his dry throat.

“I’m sorry. I should have come sooner, but I was asleep—asleep! Jedi forgive me.”

Baze reached up and closed a fist around a corner of his robes. “My name is Baze Malbus,” he rasped.

“Quiet. You must save your strength. I have to take you to a healer, your wounds are too great. Jedi forgive me. I should have come sooner.”

Thin arms curved around him and lifted him up. The fire in his back flared up again, and Baze’s vision swam.

“The Force is strong with you. Baze Malbus, stay with me. Baze Malbus. Baze…”

A last strange thought came to Baze as he lost consciousness: Chirrut Imwe had his future in his hands. Baze gave it to him willingly, with the long sore relief of coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cried when I finished watching this movie.  
> I don't know much about how Force religion actually works, so it kind of turned into a hot mess of Christianity, Islam, and Chinese Buddhism. Let me know if anything was in bad taste. I just needed some baby backstory for our favorite guardians of the Whills!! They were so OP in the movie, it was like everyone else was level 20 and they were level 100.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know much about how Force religion actually works, so it kind of turned into a hot mess of Christianity, Islam, and Chinese Buddhism. Let me know if anything was in bad taste. I just needed some baby backstory for our favorite guardians of the Whills!! They were so OP in the movie, it was like everyone else was level 20 and they were level 100.
> 
> Edit: was going to be part of a series and now the title/intro note don’t make sense lol. Lost inspiration, sadly. Works as a stand alone though.


End file.
